[McQueen]

Originally Posted by Andy3000

Ohtani started to turn into somewhat of a mini-Kobashi mid-way through 1998 with the streaky selling and almost crying after a near-fall.

yeah that's kinda true.

Jumbo's top 5 for me, with Funk being probably between 8-11. Race is another guy similair to Funk, but I'd put him slightly below the Funker.

See my arguement for Funk being the G.O.A.T. is that he was fantastic on promo's, argueably the greatest brawler ever (although I think I'd rate Hansen a little higher because he actually beat the fuck out of people), was a hell of a technician, was one of the pioneer's of the hardcore style, his selling is nothing short of amazing he could make it look just comical enough to be entertaining but at the same time he could really con you into thinking he was hurt and I personally think Funk is the greatest crowd manipulator of all time. That man could do amazing things working a crowd. Mick Foley once had a quote that really struck true to me, it was about why he thought Funk was the G.O.A.T., not Flair. He said:

Originally Posted by Mick Foley

With [Ric] Flair I could always tell I was watching a performance but Terry Funk, he made me believe.

That pretty much summed it all up for me once I read that.

However the problem with my arguement of Funk being the greatest is that his non-ECW or Flair fued '89 stuff can be hard to find. So unless you have a vault full of territory stuff from the 70's you probably haven't seen much of his greatest work.

I can never seem to settle on a concrete top 5 as I'm always changing my mind, but the main 5 would probably consist of these guys (in no particular order):
*Ric Flair
*Jushin Liger
*Jumbo Tsuruta
*HBK

Then one of these would round out the 5:
*Steve Austin
*Toshiaki Kawada
*Chris Benoit (although as far as influence on the biz goes, everyone else has that to their advantage, while this guy's like... -50)

That's a pretty hard list to argue, bravo.

[Andy3000]

Y'know, you may have single handedly inspired me to check out as much Terry Funk as I can find! I've actually seen quite a bit of his work, but the only thing is, it's all from Japan in the 70s and early 80s.

His Flair stuff was fantastic; his Hardcore matches from ECW and pretty much anywhere with Foley are often great (although I'm not huge on his ECW stuff); his stuff from All Japan that I mentioned above is fucking aweseome (his 1976 match against Jumbo for the NWA Title is probably my favourite from that decade); and he seems to pull incredible matches out his ass like nobody's business.

I'd actually put Funk just above Hansen as far as greatest brawler goes (Hansen's number 2 for me), but when I think about his best stuff (well, my favourite of his stuff), it's mostly the technical based matches with Jumbo and from All Japan that stick out. That's a testament to how good the guy actually is - being such a great technical wrestler as well as a top-tier brawler (the best IMO).

His influence on the hardcore style is obvious, no denying that.

As far as promos go he may be one of my favourite old school guys on the stick. Some of his stuff from Puerto Rico that's on Youtube is fucking amazing and it actually sounds like the crowd might kill the guy a lot of the time - coming back to you're point about crowd manipulation - he makes it so.... real, I guess.

Totally agree with the point about his selling. At times he makes me laugh because of it, but he does it in a way that it's believable and it gives you the sense the guy might actually be broken in half.

I think Terry Funk's just been cemented in my top 10 ever. Thanks, I guess

[King_Kash]

Originally Posted by vivalabrave

The BVE version is WAY better. It comes with 2 Punk matches in ROH (vs. Danielson at Reborn and vs. Strong at Future is Now) and it has a 45 minute career feature from Punk in IWA. You can find it on Amazon for $5.

Homicide/Punk in strip club is included on this DVD??

[KingCrash]

Originally Posted by King_Kash

Homicide/Punk in strip club is included on this DVD??

It's included on the DVD.

[GP_Punk]

Originally Posted by Andy3000

Y'know, you may have single handedly inspired me to check out as much Terry Funk as I can find! I've actually seen quite a bit of his work, but the only thing is, it's all from Japan in the 70s and early 80s.

That's the exact same problem i have...i can't find anything from the US territories besides the Flair stuff.
I guess someone is gonna have to find some old school trader and rip from tapes if they even exist before we see more stuff...

[vivalabrave]

PWG ASTONISHING X-MAS
Alex Shelley vs. Scott Lost --- ***1/2
Quicksilver/Talwar vs. Ronin/Nemesis ---**1/2
Colt Cabana vs. Scorpio Sky --- **
Generico/Tornado vs. Strong/Evans --- ***3/4
Joey Ryan vs. Chris Kanyon (PWG World Title) --- **
Samoa Joe vs. Davey Richards --- ***1/4
Daniels/Williams/Koslov/B-Boy vs. Sabin/Kazarian/Romero/Perkins --- ***1/2
Super Dragon vs. Kevin Steen (Guerrilla Warfare Match) --- ****1/4

[Andy3000]

Originally Posted by GP_Punk

That's the exact same problem i have...i can't find anything from the US territories besides the Flair stuff.
I guess someone is gonna have to find some old school trader and rip from tapes if they even exist before we see more stuff...

And it's a shame because there would have been a shit load of aweseomeness, not only from Funk and the usual suspects, but from the territories in general.

I actually have a hard time finding a lot of Flair stuff from the territories as well.

[GP_Punk]

Originally Posted by Andy3000

And it's a shame because there would have been a shit load of aweseomeness, not only from Funk and the usual suspects, but from the territories in general.

I actually have a hard time finding a lot of Flair stuff from the territories as well.

Who has the rights for those things anyway? NWA i assume?

Don't they realise the money they could have coming if they put out some sort of DVD series?
Even the WWE only partially uses their vast library, mostly just for one-off DVDs (outside of the 24/7 web thing)

[Andy3000]

A best of NWA set or something with guys like Bruiser Brody, Harley Race in his prime, more Flair (you can never get enough Flair), The Von Erichs and The Funks, only to name a small few, would be fucking incredible.

I'm not actually sure if WWE bought the NWA library as well along with WCW's, I'd assume the NWA still hold the rights to it though.

[-Blaskohiro Tenryu-]

Originally Posted by vivalabrave

Super Dragon vs. Kevin Steen (Guerrilla Warfare Match) --- ****1/4

** 1/4 or even near *** tbh.